STEM Ambassadors and Equality in HE

Dr Clare Gartlandc.gartland@ucs.ac.uk

The study: background

• An ethnographic study

• Data collected over 2 years (2008-2009)

• Study centered on 2 contrasting universities in the same geographic area

Bankside – a new university Royal – a traditional ‘elite’

university

STEM (science, technology, engineering and mathematics, including medicine)

• Engineering Strategically Important and Vulnerable Subject

(SIVS) 13 percent undergraduate population were women

in 2009 attracts predominantly middle class male students some ethnic minority groups underrepresented

• Medicine women now out number men on undergraduate

courses some ethnic minority and lower socio economic

groups significantly underrepresented (Conner et al, 2004; HESA, 2009;

RAEng 2009)

Partnership working: the stakeholders• Aimhigher• Higher education Institutions (HEIs)

▫ Project managers (WP units)▫ Management▫ The Medical Access Scheme (Royal)

• Further Education (FE) Colleges▫ Teachers/ FE lecturers

• Schools▫ Teachers

• Local Education Authorities (LEAs)▫ Borough coordinators

• External organisations/ charities▫ Charitable funding supporting the MAS at

Royal▫ Accessing Engineering Project (AEP) at

Bankside

Policy Assumptions

• ‘Coordinators commend the way in which interaction with higher education students’ can ‘play a part in breaking down cultural barriers’ and the way in which ambassadors can make higher education ‘cool in the schools’(p38). (HEFCE (2005) Evaluation of Aimhigher

• An evaluation of the student associates scheme (for the TDA) is also cited in this report: ‘by being close in age and experience, student associates can relate to the issues young people face’ (p38).

Research approach: conceptualising learning• Hodkinson and Macleod (2007) suggest that a

focus in research on the outcomes of learning, the ‘static products of learning’, are ‘all indicative of seeing learning as acquisition’.

• David (2010) outlines the need for a nuanced understanding of teaching and learning and the ‘development of a social scientific understanding of teaching and learning in different settings and how diverse learning occurs’ (David, 2010: p6).

Research: a multi-stranded, reflexive approach‘a toolbox of diverse concepts and theories – an applied

sociology rather than a pure one’ (Ball, 1994)

Diverse Concepts and Theories

• Foucauldian discourse analysis and Post-structuralism (Willig, 2001; Wetherell and Potter, 1992; Wetherell, 1998, 2001; Butler, 1988; Hey 2006; Youdell, 2006; Davies, 2006)

• Psychosocial research (Hey, 1997; Renold and Ringrose; 2008)

• Learning theory (Colley Hodkinson and Malcolm, 2003)

Toolbox

• Ethnography (Skeggs, 1997; Hey, 2006; Youdell, 2006)• Social Psychology (Willig, 2001)• Grounded Theory (Charmaz, 2003; Charmaz and Mitchell,

2007)

Participants • Activities targeted pupils from south east London state schools

from ‘deprived’ boroughs (according to the 2004 Multiple Deprivation Index) with extremely low participation rates in HE

• Ambassadors were predominantly 1st generation HE • Pupils and ambassadors were ethnically diverse with the largest

group represented being Black African

Data• Interview/ conversations with project organisers

• Observation of activities & meetings

• Informal conversations/ focus groups held with:

Royal: 41 pupils; 16 student ambassadors Bankside 71 pupils; 16 student ambassadors

Marketing discourses: pupils as consumers within the marketplace of HE‘slowly … the internal pressures mount – there is a benchmark and you are asked what you are doing to meet it? You get – it’s lovely you’re doing charity work but … (WP manager, Royal)

‘They’ve sold it to us …’(SS)

Related neo-liberal discourses of:

individualism (Royal)employability (Bankside)

Chanelle: Yes, you don’t have to come from an upper class background or a grammar school to get to university. You can come from where they are coming from; there’s no real boundaries apart from your actual expectations in your head, I think. It’s like, if you think you won’t be able to make it then that’s going to limit you in where you’re going. If you think I can do this, I can achieve what I want to achieve then that will give you inspiration to go and if there is someone telling you, you know I came from where you come from; I came from a lower privileged background and I’m here; it inspires them (Royal: Medical Day)

Head of Recruitment (Bankside):They need to be professional – corporate … they are representing the institution they are working for

Wendy: working for the AEP is like customer services – you treat the children with respect so that they’re nice back to you (Bankside: STEM day)

Fabienne: the supervisors didn’t really help me- it’s 3 years till I go to university – I don’t really want to know – I’m not bothered. I already know what you have to do – I knew the stuff that you can do – stuff you can gain from it (Bankside: Engineering Camp)

Learning Practices and Identities: the importance of learning contextsDiscourses related to teaching and learning were notably different in different learning contexts.

The balance of informal and formal ‘attributes’ in the learning contexts ‘inevitably changes the nature of the learning’ (Colley, 2005; Colley, Hodkinson and Malcolm, 2003)

Yvonne: I used to argue with Adam – I would say, that’s the way to do it – he’d say, that’s another way… I knew a formula that, what’s it called – where you do that table thing?

Bim: The green method

Yvonne: Yeah, the green method, I would say, that’s the way you do it and he was like, no, you have to do that and I went and told Miss M and she said it was the green method (MW)

Martin: ... (we talk) about everything. Obviously most of us here want to go into medicine – so we have very similar ideas (G&T SS)

Sarah: (engineering) there are some difficult things to consider ...I wouldn’t say it’s an easy subject – it’s something where you’d need to use your initiative – you need to put other people into what would go wrong and what would go right

Ayisha: you need to plan it all out exactly ...it’s about team work ...although it’s complicated you are able to work it out in small stages so you will eventually get there... (TT)

Social Relationships and Identities

In contexts with more ‘informal attributes’ pupils repeatedly described ambassadors as like ‘friends’, ‘cousins’, brothers’ and sisters’

‘like a sister or a brother or someone ‘cause you can tell them what you’re thinking…’

Butler … posits a performative politics in which she imagines discourses taking on new meanings and circulating in contexts from which they have been barred or in which they have been rendered unintelligible, as performative subjects engage a deconstructive politics that intervenes and unsettles hegemonic meanings. (Butler 1997: in Youdell, 2006: p512)

Ayisha:... because we’re students and they’re students –I know they might not be the same age but - you kind of have the sense of...they seem like us (TT)

Jenny: … they understand what we need …Tosin: When they talk freely they don’t talk really, really formal likeAbi: … like they break it down for us and they don’t talk like all confusing – they speak how we do kind ofTosin: And they are more straightforward – you know teachers they just go on and on …John: I heard one of them say, “butters” (laughter) – slang (MD)

Laticia: She looks like a Miss P type. She’ll talk about – I don’t eat animals, I eat miso – but she looks smart

Janine: I don’t know – she looks like one of dem girls that will speak to me about things that I don’t even care – like, I don’t eat meat, I don’t do ....

Yvette: … she’s like … Organic people – the ones that kill their own chickens …

Bim: I saw her jogging …She’s a vegetarian but we like Kentucky chicken (MW)

Conclusions

Contemporary neo-liberal discourses operate as ‘regimes of truth’ (Foucault, 1980) within these HEIs. These dominant discourses:

▫position ambassadors as marketers and pupils as consumers

▫problematise pupils as lacking appropriate ambition▫individualize success▫ignore structural obstacles and can embed existing

stratification within the HE sector

But….Working collaboratively with ambassadors in subject specific contexts with informal ‘attributes’ provides pupils with an opportunity to enact student/ subject identities where pupils briefly take up new ‘ways of being’ (Davies, 2006)

In these contexts, ambassadors can contribute to disrupting existing gendered, raced and classed subject identities and ’ and ‘interrupt dominant identity patterns of (dis)identification’ (Archer et al, 2010) in STEM